The Gist
- Sitecore Stream expands with AI-driven capabilities. New enhancements include AI copilots, agentic workflows and brand-aware AI for improved personalization and marketing efficiency.
- Over 250 new features introduced. Sitecore’s latest update spans its DXP, including XM Cloud, Content Hub and Experience Platform, making AI-driven content and campaign management more accessible.
- Simplifying migration and development. Sitecore continues refining XM Cloud migration tools, attempting to reduce complexity with AI automation, expanded framework support and a more “marketer-friendly” CMS.
Sitecore today announced an expansion of its “intelligent” digital experience platform (DXP) and content management system (CMS), introducing over 250 new capabilities.
Sitecore highlighted its “Intelligent DXP” with its new Sitecore Stream offering in Nashville last fall. Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Sitecore Stream aims to orchestrate a marketer experience across Sitecore solutions, including XM Cloud, Content Hub and Experience Platform (XP).
Today’s updates: they include enhancements to Sitecore Stream AI and new features designed to improve content personalization, automation and marketing efficiency.
“We made a big splash about Stream at Symposium, but we’ve been continuing to double down on that,” Sitecore CEO Dave O’Flanagan said in an interview with CMSWire. “Stream is our umbrella of product capabilities related to AI. It’s got agentic workflows to manage work across the whole DXP. It’s got the brand-aware AI, the brain that sits at the heart of the stack, making sure that enterprises can safely leverage this capability tailored to their brand. And it’s got this suite of agents and copilots that are specific to each product to help marketers do things better, faster, quicker. So we’re continuing to add and enhance that as part of this release.”
Table of Contents
What Is Sitecore?
Before we dive into the latest enhancements, let’s dial it back and give you the Sitecore basics.
According to the CMSWire DXP Market Guide, Sitecore, a privately held software company founded in Denmark in 2001, provides a digital experience platform among other capabilities. Initially focused on content management, it expanded into the U.S. in 2004 and later into Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Acquired by EQT in 2016 for $1.1 billion, Sitecore received an additional $1.2 billion investment in 2021 to drive innovation and expansion. The company has made several strategic acquisitions, including Stylelabs (2018) for content management, Boxever (2021) for customer data and Four51 (2021) for headless commerce, reinforcing its shift toward a composable DXP model.
Sitecore’s platform is built on .NET and supports hybrid and headless architectures. Its offerings include Sitecore XM Cloud for content management, Sitecore XP for customer journey orchestration and a suite of AI-powered tools such as Sitecore Personalize for real-time A/B testing and Sitecore Discover for AI-driven search.
Balancing Hosting Architecture: Monolithic to SaaS Migrations
While it continues to integrate its SaaS acquisitions, some overlap remains between its traditional monolithic DXP and newer cloud-based services. Sitecore has also expanded support for containerization and headless development, attempting to make it easier for enterprises to customize and scale their digital experiences.
Despite its innovation and strong industry presence, Gartner has highlighted Sitecore’s complexity and migration challenges for customers transitioning to its cloud-based offerings (it did in its latest DXP Magic Quadrant report out this month; more on that later). However, the company has accelerated efforts to simplify deployment through AI-driven automation and enhanced developer tools. With continued investment in AI, personalization and hybrid headless capabilities, Sitecore remains a key player in the evolving DXP landscape, serving major brands such as Microsoft, Toyota, and L’Oréal.
Related Article: Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs): What to Know in 2025
AI-Driven Enhancements to Sitecore’s DXP and CMS
Back to today’s news. Sitecore Stream now embeds three features across Sitecore’s products:
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Brand-aware AI: Ensures AI-driven actions align with brand identity, evolving over time to enhance personalization.
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AI copilots and agents: Assist marketers with strategy execution, content creation and campaign management.
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Agentic workflows: Balance human input with automation through varying levels of AI involvement, including chain-of-thought prompting and human-in-the-loop interactions.
New Features Target Marketers’ Pain Points
The latest Sitecore release includes a mix of AI-driven and workflow-enhancing tools:
Sitecore’s XM Cloud.
Related Article: For Marketers, AI Ambitions Clash With Real-World Concerns
AI and Composability Drive Sitecore’s Future
Sitecore’s partner network has responded positively to the updates, emphasizing their potential for efficiency and scalability.
Megan Jensen, portfolio specialist and four-time Sitecore Strategy MVP at Perficient, told CMSWire, “Sitecore continues to lead the industry with their latest product updates that empower marketing teams with smarter, more intuitive tools. Their focus on efficiency, ease of use and expanded out-of-the-box capabilities gives marketers more time to focus on creativity and strategy and shows they’re truly listening to their partners and end users as they evolve these platforms.”
David San Filippo, senior vice president of digital content & experience at Altudo, noted, “Besides the GA of Stream, Sitecore has been more open with partners since Symposium, adding a roadmap to their developer portal that shows what they’re working on and where they are going. I think Stream’s capabilities reinforce Sitecore’s position in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant, where it was recognized for its completeness of vision.”
Sitecore’s Strategy: AI Copilots and Intelligent Workflows
Sitecore Stream is the first step toward a future where AI copilots and intelligent workflows enhance marketing execution, according to San Filippo.
“The ability to train your AI on what’s important to your brand, ensuring that automation aligns with your organization’s identity will make AI-driven content and campaign management more effective,” he added. “… Beyond Stream, and AI features being added to Content Hub, the release talks a lot about enhancements to XM Cloud, which probably has the strongest hybrid headless offering I’ve seen in the market. XM Cloud’s Pages editor stands out for WYSIWYG editing, marketer-friendly component and form builders, built in personalization and, with this announcement, AB testing.”
Adding support for frameworks other than Next.js brings a real choice of front-end to the platform, according to San Filippo. He’s worked with customers who are Angular shops that have been waiting for this.
Sitecore on Migration Complexity: Market Maturity Takes Time
Sitecore was recognized in the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for its innovation, composable DXP capabilities and B2B solutions. However, the report also highlighted concerns about platform complexity, reliance on technical expertise and migration challenges for customers transitioning to XM Cloud.
O’Flanagan acknowledged in his interview with CMSWire the challenges related to platform complexity but emphasized the company’s ongoing efforts to simplify the experience across the stack. He noted that generative AI has played a key role in streamlining processes, while Sitecore has also undertaken a complete rebuild of its visual authoring environment to improve usability. Major updates are expected to be unveiled by late April or early May, which O’Flanagan described as a significant leap forward in accessibility and innovation.
The challenge, he said, is balancing enterprise-grade capabilities with user-friendly tools, ensuring that Sitecore meets the needs of both sophisticated technical teams and business users.
Accelerating XM Cloud Migrations With AI and Partner Support
Regarding XM Cloud migrations, O’Flanagan said Sitecore has made substantial progress, with partners now able to complete migrations in as little as 12 weeks.
“We’re introducing a whole bunch of AI tooling that can auto-migrate websites, not just an old XP website from Sitecore, but any website to the XM Cloud. That’ll be part of the Stream release as well,” O’Flanagan said. “And so we’re really excited about the work we’ve been doing.”
Part of it is education, he added. Sitecore needed partners to go through the process of migrating a number of customers to the SaaS XM Cloud so that they could get comfortable with the new technology. Additionally, Sitecore has been refining XM Cloud’s developer experience, making SDKs lighter and expanding framework support beyond Next.js to include .NET and other JavaScript frameworks.
“We’ve got a really strong staple of partners that have done this,” O’Flanagan told CMSWire. “We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of migrations behind us, and we’ve got better at it. … It just needed the time to do it. You know, every company, when you release a new product, it takes time for it to mature in market. It takes time for partners to understand how to implement it. I think we’ve gone through that painful process now, and we’re kind of on the far side of that challenge.”
Core Questions Around Sitecore Stream’s AI-Powered Expansion
Editor’s note: Here are key questions about Sitecore’s latest updates and AI-driven enhancements:
What is Sitecore Stream, and how does it enhance Sitecore’s DXP?
Sitecore Stream is an AI-powered layer that integrates across Sitecore’s ecosystem, bringing agentic workflows, brand-aware AI and AI copilots to help marketers automate content creation, campaign management, and personalization.
How do Sitecore’s AI enhancements improve marketer workflows?
The latest updates introduce intelligent automation, AI-powered content generation and workflow orchestration, allowing marketing teams to work more efficiently while maintaining brand consistency, according to Sitecore.
What challenges do enterprises face when migrating to Sitecore XM Cloud?
While Sitecore has introduced AI-driven automation tools to simplify migration, enterprises transitioning from traditional Sitecore XP to XM Cloud often face complexities related to customization, technical expertise and platform integration.
What are the key takeaways from Sitecore’s latest AI-driven updates?
Sitecore’s updates focus on making AI more accessible across its DXP, offering marketers smarter tools to enhance personalization, streamline content management and accelerate cloud migration.
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